


in the common tongue

by babybel



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Set Mid-Season 4, also season 4 is funny bc they both are crushing on each other so hard and pretending they're not, i don't know what else to tag this it's literally just sappy bullshit, i just hear the concept of the tardis translation circuit and go bonkers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:15:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25649413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybel/pseuds/babybel
Summary: Ideas swirled about Jamie's head, but they all boiled down to one thing, really. He gathered up some courage and then posited, “If we both spoke our own language, then, we’ll still understand each other.” For whatever reason, out of everything, that was what made his face flush.-jamie and the doctor have a talk about language
Relationships: Second Doctor/Jamie McCrimmon
Comments: 6
Kudos: 56





	in the common tongue

**Author's Note:**

> this one is sort of old actually but i thought i'd finish it and edit it up :-)

“Those fellows at the gallery today, where were they from?” Jamie asked. 

He and the Doctor sat out on one of the hotel’s many little balconies. Night had fallen, and the conference was over, at least for the day. Polly had wanted to go dancing, but the Doctor had wanted to go find somewhere to watch the stars, and Jamie figured that while Ben and Polly could keep each other out of trouble fine, someone ought to look after the Doctor. 

“Hm?” The Doctor, who’d been staring up at the sky, looked over at him. 

“The lads in the picture gallery,” Jamie repeated. When the Doctor was focused on something, he found himself having to repeat things a lot. He didn’t really mind, unless they were in one of those time-sensitive, life-threatening situations where they didn’t have the seconds to spare. “They couldn’t be from Earth, with all those eyes. Where did they come from?”

“Tarv, I believe,” the Doctor answered. He was speaking quietly, like he didn’t want to bother the stars. “It’s- well, do you know how some towns are built on piers above lakes?”

“Sure I do.” Jamie wasn’t quite sure where he was going with that, but then, he never really knew where the Doctor was going with half the crazy things he conjured up. 

“Their planet is a gas giant - like Saturn - but their settlements are built on terrarian piers, just like the ones over lakes. The planet’s surface isn’t solid, but they still manage to live on it, on the floats,” the Doctor explained. “Strange little creatures, but they’re nice, aren’t they?”

“Aye, they were- polite,” Jamie agreed, trying to find a nice way to say stuffy. He pushed on, because this question had been bothering him all day, and he wanted to figure it out. “But if they’re from Torv-” 

“Tarv.” 

“Aye, that. If they’re from that then how do they know how to speak English?”

The Doctor was quiet for a moment, and at first it just seemed like he was looking at the stars with extra fondness - which would be very believable - but then he laughed. “They don’t, Jamie.” 

“But they do, I heard them,” Jamie argued. “Don’t try to tell me I don’t know what I’m hearing; it was clear as day and I understood them.” 

“Oh, well, of course you did.” The Doctor was still smiling. “It’s a trick the ship does. If anyone or anything tries to speak to us, the TARDIS will translate it for us. We’ll hear a language we can understand, no matter which one it’s beng spoken in.” 

Jamie nodded and put on his best understanding things face so the Doctor knew he was taking it seriously. Really, the fact of it stuck with him, and bothered him in a way few things did. In a good way. Was it possible to be bothered in a good way? He couldn’t stop thinking about it. After a moment, he asked, quietly, because he actually wasn’t sure, “We’re both speaking English now, right?”

“You might be,” the Doctor answered. “I’m not. I’m speaking my language.” 

“Your language?” Jamie inquired. So, so rarely did the Doctor ever bring up anything about himself that way, about where he’d come from. Jamie fixated on those moments, few and far between as they were, because they made him feel like he had a right to be as close to the Doctor as he thought he was. 

The Doctor nodded. “I can speak English if I want to. I can speak a few Earth languages, in fact. And I do, with most people. But with you- I just find it’s a bit of a comfort to be able to use what I grew up speaking.”

“Me too,” Jamie agreed. He hadn’t spoken Gaelic in months, maybe longer. He hadn’t felt safe to. On alien worlds maybe that was silly, but it was drilled into him nonetheless. It was a survival mechanism. “Are you saying that-”

“Oh, but look!” the Doctor exclaimed. 

“What?”

The Doctor reached across the little table and gently took hold of Jamie’s face, turning it out to follow his own gaze. “There, do you see?”

“A shooting star.” Jamie smiled, watching it streak across the deep velvet of the sky. It was pretty. It was also hard to concentrate on it, with the Doctor’s hands on him like that. The Doctor’s skin felt colder than the air, which couldn’t be right. He couldn’t be bothered to care about the cold, though; he was still thinking about translation, and about how ginger the Doctor’s fingers were on his cheek. 

“Isn’t that marvelous?” The Doctor sounded content. 

Jamie didn’t answer because he knew the Doctor already knew that he agreed. 

They sat there in silence, watching the star move until it had disappeared. The Doctor’s hands slipped from Jamie’s face, and went back to resting on the table. 

Only then, when the star was definitively gone, did Jamie feel all right to keep asking about that translation trick. Ideas swirled about his head, but they all boiled down to one thing, really. He gathered up some courage and then posited, “If we both spoke our own language, then, we’ll still understand each other.” For whatever reason, out of everything, that was what made his face flush.

“Yes, we should be able to.” The Doctor’d torn his eyes from the stars and was watching Jamie carefully. 

Jamie could hear his heartbeat, because he hadn’t done this in so long, and it seemed a little too good to be true. He asked, in Gaelic, “Do you know what I’m saying?”

“Of course.” The Doctor smiled. “As much as I ever do.” 

Jamie realized he might cry if he said anything else, which was silly and he knew it, but he still couldn’t do anything about it, so he looked down at his hands and waited. He was probably tired, he was probably just tired. That was it. But that wasn’t it; it was both being able to speak your own blood language and still understanding each other, and it was that it did mean something, being able to use Gaelic. It mattered, and he hadn’t had that comfort before, and it felt a bit like coming home. It all just sort of sat in him and made his chest ache. 

The Doctor’d completely forsaken the sky in favour of observing Jamie, and the way he did it made Jamie feel like he was acting curiously.

He probably was. So he tried to laugh, and said, “I’m never speaking English again.” 

“Good,” the Doctor replied, in a way that suggested that the good thing wasn’t really the statement itself but that Jamie wasn’t being too quiet anymore.

“Ben and Polly won’t know?” Jamie asked, after he was sure he could speak levelly again. He just had to make sure. He knew it wouldn’t matter even if they did know, but he still felt that compulsion to hide it, just a bit. 

“I shouldn’t think they’d be able to tell,” the Doctor assured him. “There’s the slightest difference in inflection, but it’s too small to pick out without having reason to.” He was tapping his fingers on the table in that nervous way of his, and he finally added, softly, “I can tell.” 

“Of course you can, you know everything,” Jamie scoffed, and he found himself smiling.

“Oh, very funny,” the Doctor muttered, and gave Jamie’s shoulder a harmless little push. 

After he’d shrugged the joke off, Jamie asked, “What does it sound like? To you, I mean.”

“Well, very nearly the same,” answered the Doctor. “But you’re so much more- you, that’s it. There’s more you in it. You did sound like you before, naturally, but now it’s- it’s-” He gave a little cough. “It’s hard to pin down. It does make me feel like you trust me, though.”

“I do trust you,” Jamie admitted immediately, and lord, did saying it in Gaelic feel like it meant so much more. “With anything, I think. You know that.”

“Uhm- yes, I do.” The Doctor nodded, and he wasn’t looking at Jamie anymore; he was really looking anywhere but. He cleared his throat, and added, “It’s a bit chilly, isn’t it. Should we head inside and look for Polly and Ben?”

Jamie pulled off his scarf and passed it over the table to the Doctor. It certainly wasn’t much, but it might do something against the cold. “Do you want to go in?” he asked. “There might be another one of those stars.” He asked it knowing, and knowing the Doctor would know too, that it was just an excuse to stay out. And not even to stay out, really, but just to stay somewhere it was just the two of them. He wasn’t sure if the Doctor knew that bit. Probably. The Doctor could read him like anything, and he didn’t really mind. 

“Oh, you’re right,” the Doctor said, and he sounded relieved. He hadn’t put the scarf on; he was holding it, rubbing his thumb over the fabric absentmindedly. “We can’t miss that. We ought to wait a little longer, just in case. There’s often more than one at a time, did you know that?”

Jamie hadn’t. “Shooting stars?”

“Yes.” The Doctor was looking back up at the sky. He’d wound the scarf over one of his palms, and was holding it tight. “They’re meteors, really, not stars. They’re just bits of space rock or debris or what have you - meteoroids - that break into a planet’s atmosphere. That’s where the glow comes from; they’re going so terribly fast. They come usually from around the same place in the sky - that’s called the radiant - so if we can remember where the first one showed up, we’ll spot any more of them easier.” 

Jamie propped his head up on a hand, and listened to the Doctor go on about arcs of origin, and atmospheric friction, and a hundred other things he had no context for despite the Doctor’s best efforts to explain them. He’d already have been happy sitting here forever, just to listen, even though it really was a little cold and even though he didn’t understand most of it, but knowing the Doctor was saying it all in his own language made it that much better. And knowing that he, when he’d inevitably have to break in to ask for a definition or clarification, would be able to ask it in Gaelic added to it as well. 

He thought about it, as he listened to the Doctor circle back to radiants. Initially, the fact that they could both speak their own blood languages as they were and understand each other’s perfectly felt a bit like some sort of mutual swearing of fealty. But then he thought a bit more, and remembered that trust could exist without servitude, and realized that it was just that. Trust. He also realized he’d have to give the Doctor that scarf permanently, because it had a certain sense of belonging there in his hand that made Jamie feel warm despite the chill in the air around them. 

“Hold on, Doctor,” he interrupted, without fully meaning to. 

The Doctor looked over at him, mind obviously still off on the train it’d been on. 

Since he’d said something, he had to follow through, so he took the scarf back. “If you want this to do anything you’ve got to put it on, you know. Can’t have you getting cold.” 

The look the Doctor was giving him softened. “You shouldn’t worry; it takes an awful lot of cold to-” He stopped, holding perfectly still, as Jamie reached over the table and looped the scarf around his neck. His eyes flicked down to Jamie’s hands, then back up, searching. 

“There.” Jamie finished tying the scarf. “Alright, you go on.” 

“I-” The Doctor looked up at the sky for a moment before turning back to Jamie, flushed. “I’ve completely forgotten what it was I was saying.” 

There was a beat where Jamie couldn’t get himself to speak, and he was just staring at the Doctor and the Doctor was staring back at him. Then he kicked himself, and said, “I think it was something about how they catch fire coming down. The stars. Meteors, I mean.” 

The Doctor blinked, still frozen, and finally replied, “Right. You’re right, that was it. Atmospheric variables.” And he looked down at his hands, then up towards said atmosphere, and carried on. 

Jamie tucked his hands into his jacket pockets, settled himself in his seat, and went back to listening. 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @lesbiandonnanoble


End file.
